ArticleRoyal Society open science2022
Waking inactivity as a welfare indicator in laboratory mice: investigating postures, facial expressions and depression-like states.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Robust Scoring System to Evaluate Animal Well-Being in Murine (Mus musculus) Orthotopic Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer Models.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2026Article
- Impact of Bedding Volume on Cage Microclimate and Behavior in 129SV and Desmin-Knockout (Des-/-) Mice.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- The Primate Welfare INdicators project (PWIN): For an objective and standardised welfare assessment of non-human primates used in research.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2026Article
- Inactive but awake behaviour as indicating a depression-like state in mice: aetiological factors and association with adult hippocampal neurogenesis.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Early-life enrichment in American mink (Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Article
- Do white-footed mice, the main reservoir of the Lyme disease pathogen in the United States, clinically respond to the borrelial tenancy?Infection and immunity · 2024Article
- An exploration of the postural, location- and social contact- related sub-characteristics of inactive but awake behaviour as a depression-like indicator in mice.Applied animal behaviour science · 2024Article
- DNA/RNA heteroduplex technology with cationic oligopeptide reduces class-related adverse effects of nucleic acid drugs.Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids · 2024Article
- Novel enrichment reduces boredom-associated behaviors in housed dairy cows.JDS communications · 2024Article
- Rodent tests of depression and anxiety: Construct validity and translational relevance.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- Waking inactivity as a welfare indicator in laboratory mice: investigating postures, facial expressions and depression-like states.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animal welfare assessment relies on valid and practical indicators of affect. In mice, the most widely used research vertebrates, lying still with eyes open, inactive-but-awake (IBA) in the home cage, has potential to be one such indicator. IBA is elevated in barren, conventional housing compared with well-resourced, enriched housing, and predicts immobility in Forced Swim Tests, a common measure of 'helplessness' in depression research. In Experiment 1, using females from three strains (C57BL/6, Balb/c and DBA/2), we first replicated past findings, confirming higher levels of IBA in conventional cages and a positive relationship between IBA and helplessness. We then extended this research to three other signs of depression: changes in weight and sleep, and reduced hippocampal volume. Here, IBA positively covaried with body mass index, with sleep in DBA/2s and conventionally housed BALB/cs, and negatively covaried with hippocampal volume in conventionally housed C57BL/6s. In Experiment 2, we sought to refine the phenotype of IBA to improve its accuracy as a welfare indicator. Here, scoring IBA performed in hunched postures appeared to improve its accuracy as an indicator in Balb/c mice. Additional research is now needed to further refine the phenotype of IBA and to confirm whether it reflects states consistent with depression, or instead other underlying poor welfare conditions.
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